


the end is barely beginning

by leoperidot



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Hakoda (Avatar) is a Good Parent, Healing, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-War, Sokka (Avatar) Needs a Hug, go read salvage if you haven't, honestly so does hakoda, i don't know how to tag this it's literally just a conversation between a dad and his son, i really enjoy writing in his perspective, it is almost more like a character study of hakoda, just read it i think it's good, thank u muffinlance, this is honestly not very bakoda, used some muffinlance ocs for one-off mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26829487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoperidot/pseuds/leoperidot
Summary: Fire Lord Zuko has been crowned, peace talks have begun, and Sokka is turning sixteen. The war is, strangely enough, over.
Relationships: Bato/Hakoda (Avatar), Hakoda & Sokka (Avatar)
Comments: 29
Kudos: 161





	the end is barely beginning

**Author's Note:**

> sooooOOOOOOoooo i was planning on posting this for bakoda fleet week but i scrapped it and like 20 minutes ago i opened up the google doc and was like hey wait a minute... this was good? so i'm posting it. hooray
> 
> this is for leo yearning-hours bc she loves my bakoda fic and i love her

Sokka turns sixteen in the palace of the Fire Lord.

Hakoda doesn’t think he’ll ever get over that.

Sokka’s end-of-summer birthday, marked by the setting of the midnight sun in their coastal South Pole village, falls on a day almost indistinguishable from any other in the hot, humid, equatorial capital city of the Fire Nation, except that it’s the day after the new Fire Lord’s coronation.

In the afternoon, Katara and Suki throw Sokka an impromptu birthday party with food mostly pilfered from the leftovers of Zuko’s coronation celebrations. There’s music courtesy of a few military men, including Zuko’s uncle, who is short and rotund and kind and also, apparently, the fucking Dragon of the West. (Hakoda tries to be subtle about avoiding the uncle after he learns that particular tidbit. Maybe he’s paranoid, but the rumors he heard from Earth Kingdom generals are enough to make him wary of being in the same room with the man.) There are guards posted at each entrance and exit.

The kids all look so tired.

He counts them in his head, calls a silent roll, like he used to for his men after a fight. Sokka and Katara, first on his list, always. Avatar Aang, Suki-from-Kyoshi (not Oshinama—that’s a mistake Hakoda only has to make once), the blind earthbender whose name he should remember, Fire Lord Zuko, the two Fire Nation girls he remembers from Boiling Rock whose names he never learned. Haru and Teo and the Duke. All of them are too young and too broken and after a while he can’t keep standing there pretending to enjoy himself while these kids pretend they’re okay for his sake. And probably for Iroh’s, and maybe even each others’, but Hakoda’s presence can’t be helping.

Hakoda gives his son a hug, and his daughter, and then Aang too, and he tells them he’s going to sit out in the courtyard, and the Fire Lord, the skinny teenaged Fire Lord with bags under his eyes the size of Fire Nation gold pieces, waves at the guards to let Hakoda by.

Hakoda sprawls out with his back against the tree and thinks about his men.

He thinks about the tired teenagers trying to celebrate in the scarred palace and sees the faces of the youngest crewmen, Toklo and Panuk, barely older than the kids inside, still stuck in a prison he can’t know where. He thinks about all the Fire Nation royal healers scurrying around after all the kids, changing their bandages, trying and failing to get them to stay in bed, and sees Kustaa, the gruff bearded man he’s known since childhood. 

Mostly, he sees Bato. 

Bato is any tall, black-haired servant from a distance, until Hakoda sees the red clothes and the pale skin and remembers all over again. Bato is any deep, slow voice he hears. Bato’s is the face he expects to wake up next to each morning; he wakes up wrapped in silk and sinking in plush and the bed is too luxurious and too big to be alone in.

He replays their last moments alone together over and over in his mind. Both not sleeping on the night before the eclipse, too nervous and strung-out and full of thoughts to consider speaking.

He and Bato had gone into battle a million times before, had faced down the Fire Nation by each other’s side for years. They had, once, almost lost each other. There was nothing so different about the next day, really, Hakoda tried to convince himself. Not enough to warrant the sort of dramatic confession that lurked at the back of Hakoda’s throat. 

So he didn’t say anything.

And now Bato is imprisoned and Hakoda is free.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting out there by the time Sokka wanders out, limping along on his one crutch. Hakoda winces each time he sees his son’s injury. He can’t help but feel guilty. He doesn’t voice this because anyone will tell him it’s not his fault, but he knows it is.

Hakoda offers his arm, but Sokka doesn’t take it, choosing instead to plop gracelessly down in the grass beside Hakoda and let his crutch fall. He’ll need that soon enough, and it’s just slightly out of his reach now—but no matter, because now Sokka is leaning his head against Hakoda’s shoulder, eyes drooping, and there is nothing in the world more important than Hakoda’s children getting some spirits-damned sleep.

“Is the party over?”

Sokka shrugs. “Kinda. Zuko had to go, and Iroh went with him, and Aang got super freaked out and then we just sort of . . .”

Hakoda nods, because Sokka’s clearly reluctant to say anything more. He leans down, presses his nose to Sokka’s forehead, and breathes in. Sokka smells like sweat and dirt and whatever perfumey soap they use on the sheets in those too-big, too-plush palace beds. He does not smell like home.

Sokka groans. “It’s _so_ hot here. Makes me want to rip my skin off.”

“I know.” It’s particularly hot that day, the temperature climbing so much it reminds Hakoda of his time in the Boiling Rock, that stone and metal cooking pot where they were stewed alive. “I can’t wait to get home.”

“I’m tired,” Sokka says, with a big, fake yawn. Hakoda doesn’t know who, exactly, he’s performing for.

Hakoda wraps an arm around his son’s shoulders. “Get some sleep,” he says, rubbing Sokka’s arm. “That’s your birthday present. From me.”

“Gee, thanks, Dad,” Sokka murmurs, his eyes fully closed now. His second yawn is more authentic. “I love it.”

“Welcome.”

They’re quiet for a few minutes, but Sokka’s breath hasn’t evened out enough for him to be asleep yet.

Sure enough, after a moment, he jerks his eyes open and says, “Did I tell you—Zuko’s gonna free everyone who was taken prisoner on the Day of Black Sun.”

Hakoda feels his heart lift. “You didn’t mention that. That’s wonderful.”

 _Everyone._ All of his men. Toklo and Panuk and Kustaa and all of his men. And _Bato._

“I know. I asked him, and he said of course.” Sokka settles back, and he’s quiet for a second, and then he says, “This is so _weird._ ”

“What is?”

“You know, like—” He gestures vaguely. “This. All of this. Us, sitting here. It’s weird.”

“The war being over,” Hakoda adds, just to hear himself say it. Which is not precisely true—Fire Nation soldiers still carpet the Earth Kingdom, peace treaties have yet to be negotiated, 

He spends his days in peace talks with other world leaders—who speak to him like he’s a child they’re deigning to allow at the table, like they’re humoring him by listening to his requests, like any concession to the Southern Water Tribes’ needs, however minor or perfunctory, is a gift he should grovel at their feet for. Which is basically how General Fong’s secretaries treated him and his fleet during the war, so he’s used to it. He shouldn’t be, but to be fair, the war has made them all very used to things they should not be.

“It’s over,” he repeats, to hear himself say it again.

“Yes, exactly, that’s weird,” Sokka says, then considers. “Me being friends with the Fire Lord. Me just casually going up to the Fire Lord and saying, like, hey dude, can you free those prisoners of war from my Tribe and him being like—” Sokka puts on a higher, raspy affect. “You got it, buddy.” It’s a surprisingly apt impression of the young Fire Lord. “Because we’re friends. It’s so weird.”

Hakoda smiles to himself, considering the way he saw Zuko looking at Sokka during their time at the air temple, and the way Sokka looked back, and thinks, involuntarily, of Bato.

His heart twists in his chest. The last time he saw Bato, both of them were in chains, Hakoda being dragged along by guards and looking behind him at just barely the right moment to see Bato in his cell, eyes wide and fearful and desperate—and then Hakoda was shoved into a dark wagon and then he was alone.

“You okay?” Sokka asks.

Hakoda had clearly not been masking his emotions as well as he thought he had. “Don’t worry about me,” he says quickly, his throat regrettably thick. “That’s not your job.”

Because he can’t just drop this on Sokka. Hey, kid, your dad’s in love with a man now. Surprise.

Your dad is in love with his best friend of decades and he only realized it when Bato nearly died at a firebender’s hands, just like Kya, and the fear and grief and shame was almost the same, which felt at once profane and perfect, and he sort of suspects Bato reciprocates but it’s not like they could have talked about it, there was a war to fight and ships to capture and a world to save and the one time he had the opportunity he was too cowardly to take it and now, in this theoretical, tenuous, half-formed peace, Hakoda is free and sitting in the courtyard of the Fire Lord’s palace with a breeze on his face while Bato still rots in prison and how can Hakoda even begin to tell his son any of this?

“I just miss them,” is what Hakoda decides to say.

“Me too,” Sokka replies, then, heavily, “I miss Bato.”

Hakoda heaves a deep sigh. “Yeah,” he says, “Me too.”

Sokka curls in closer to Hakoda’s side. “When are we gonna go home?” he asks, like he had when he was twelve and Hakoda took him out on his first whaling trip.

Hakoda doesn’t know. After the peace talks are over, probably. When the troops have been pulled out of the Earth Kingdom and the warships called back to port and the prisoners set free. When his men and his home are out from under the Fire Nation’s iron thumb. “Soon,” is his half-assed answer.

“Everything’s gonna be different now,” Sokka says.

Hakoda thinks of Bato, and doesn’t disagree.

**Author's Note:**

> here's a secret: there was gonna be another scene there, a few days later, where bato and hakoda reunited. i was never happy with how that scene came out whenever i tried to write it, so i scrapped the whole thing. but i liked this part so now i'm posting it. yay.
> 
> follow me on the tumblr @katarahairloopies
> 
> a quick edit: i meant to put this in the notes but it escaped me. that moment where hakoda smells sokka's forehead is a real inuit tradition. it's the actual version of what's sometimes called an "e***** kiss" and more info can be found here: https://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20050216/LIFE/302169966 but yeah, from what i've read it's traditionally done between mothers and children ((all kinds of feelings about hakoda being a widower...)) and it's a very loving gesture, to sort of get the smell of your loved one. i find it really beautiful. anyway yeah


End file.
